Publisher's Synopsis
Both analytic philosophy and cognitive psychology have made dramatic advances in understanding rationality, but there has been little interaction between the disciplines. This volume offers an integrated overview of the state of the art in the psychology and philosophy of rationality. Written by leading experts from both disciplines, The Handbook of Rationality covers the main normative and descriptive theories of rationality-how people ought to think, how they actually think, and why we often deviate from what we can call rational-and also offers insights from such other fields as artificial intelligence, behavioural economics, microeconomics, and neuroscience. The Handbook first addresses fundamentals and proposes a new classification system for researchers in human rationality, and then covers the history of rationality research in both philosophy and psychology. Drawing a basic distinction between theoretical and practical rationality, the book first considers the theoretical, beginning with the paradigms of deductive logic and probabilistic thinking, and then turns to the practical, discussing such topics as decision making, bounded rationality, game theory, and deontic and legal reasoning. Finally, it covers topics that arise in both theoretical and practical rationality, including visual and spatial thinking, scientific rationality, how children learn to reason rationally, and the connection between intelligence and rationality.
